We have now practically completed our study of the nature, functions, growth
and development of the causal body. Having thus studied what we may call the
form-side of the ego, it is now necessary that we endeavour to obtain some
further understanding of the ego himself, as a conscious, functioning entity.

In the present chapter we shall commence the study of the ego in his
relation, to his personalities: this practically amounts to the life-side of
reincarnation. The first part of our subject will be Trishna - that "thirst"
which is the primary reason why the ego seeks reincarnation. In the next
chapter we will deal more specifically with the form–side of reincarnation.
i.e. , its mechanism.

Then we shall deal with other aspects of the attitude of the ego towards the
personality. After that, we shall pass to a study of the life of the ego on
his own plane. Finally, we must study, so far as our materials permit, the
relation of the ego to the Monad.

The primary and essential reason for reincarnation is the Cosmic Will, which
impresses itself upon the ego, appearing in him as a desire for
manifestation. In obedience to this, the ego copies the action of the Logos
by pouring himself forth into the lower planes.

More specifically, this desire is known in Samskrit as Trishna, or thirst in
Pali as Tanha it is the blind thirst for manifested life, the desire to find
some region where the ego can [1]express himself, and [2] receive those
impressions and impacts from without which alone enable him to be conscious
of living, to feel himself alive.

This is not desire for life in the ordinary sense of the word, but rather for
a more perfect manifestation, a desire to feel himself more thoroughly alive
and active, a desire for that complete consciousness which involves the power
to respond to all possible vibrations from the surroundings on every plane,
so that the ego may attain the perfection of sympathy, i.e.., of
feeling-with.

As we shall see more fully later on, the ego on his own plane is far from
being fully conscious, but what consciousness he has gives him a feeling of
great pleasure, and arouses a kind of hunger for a fuller realisation of
life. It is this hunger of the ego, in fact, which lies behind the world's
great clamour for a fuller life.

It is not an outside pressure which drives a man back into incarnation: he
comes because he wants to come. If the ego did not want to come back, he
would not return: but so long as any desire remains for anything that the
world can give him, he will want to come back. Thus an ego is not driven,
against his will, back to this world of troubles, but his own intense hunger
for it brings him back.

We may take an analogy from the physical body. When food has been taken, and
completely assimilated, the body wants more food, becomes hungry. No one has
to drive the man to eat: he gets food and eats it, because he wants it.
Similarly, so long as man is imperfect, so long as he has not assimilated,
everything this world can give, and utilised it to the full, so that he does
not want anything more from this world, so long he will return to rebirth.

Trishna may be conceived as one of the many ways in which the universal law
of periodicity manifests itself. In the Esoteric Philosophy, this law is
recognised as extending to the emanation and reabsorption of the universe,
the Night and Day of Brahma, the outbreathing and the inbreathing of the
Great Breath.

Hence Hindus have pictured the God of Desire as the impulse to manifestation.
"Kama"……is in the Rig Veda [x.129] the personification of that feeling, which
leads and propels to creation. He was the first Movement that stirred the
ONE, after its manifestation from the purely abstract Principle, to create.
‘Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind; and which
sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond which
connects Entity with Non-entity.'" [The Secret Doctrine, II. 185]. Kama
[Desire] is essentially, the longing for active sentient existence, existence
of vivid sensation, the tossing turbulence of passionate life.

When spiritual Intelligence comes into contact with this thirst for
sensation, its first action is to intensify it. As the Stanza says: "From
their own essence they filled [i.e., intensified] the Kama." [Ibid. 170].
Thus Kama for the individual, as for Kosmos, becomes the primary cause of
reincarnation, and, as Desire differentiates into desires, these chain down
the Thinker to earth, and bring him back, time after time, to rebirth. The
Hindu and Buddhist scriptures are, of course, filled with this statement of
truth.

Until the realisation of Brahman is reached, there must always be Trishna.
When a man has assimilated all that he has acquired, and made it part of
himself, then Trishna will arise and drive him out to seek new experiences.

At first, this is a thirst for external experiences, and this is the sense in
which Trishna, is usually employed. There is, however, another and keener
thirst, well expressed in the phrase: "My soul is athirst for God"; yea, even
for the living, God." This is the thirst of the part to find the whole to
which it belongs. If we think of the part coming forth from, but never losing
the link with, the whole, then there is always a certain retractive
force,trying to bring the part back. The Spirit, which is divine, can find no
permanent satisfaction outside divinity: it is this dissatisfaction, this
desire to search, which is the root of Trishna, and which brings a man out of
Devachan, or, in fact, out of any condition, until the end of the search is
reached.

It is quite possible for a man to obtain a certain lower kind of Moksha - a
temporary liberation from rebirth. Thus certain of the less developed yogis
in India deliberately kill out all desires belonging to this particular
world. Realising that the world is transitory, that it is hardly worth while
to take very much trouble to remain in it, especially if there has been much
suffering or disappointment, the man reaches that form of vairagya [
non-attachment ] which is called technically "burning-ground vairagya"; this
does not lead to full Liberation, but it does result in a partial liberation.

As one of the Upanishats states, a man is born in the world to which his
desires lead him. Hence, having killed all desire for anything in this world,
the man passes away from it, and is not reborn in it. He will then pass into
a loka [ world ] which is not permanent, but in which he may remain for long
ages. There are a number of such worlds, connected very often with the
worship of a particular Divine form, connected with special kinds of
meditation, and so on, and a man may pass into one of these, and remain there
for a quite indefinite, time. In the case of those who have given themselves
very largely to meditation, their desire is is entirely towards Objects of
meditation: consequently they stay in the mental world, whither their own
desires have led them.

Whilst such people have taken themselves out of the troubles of this world,
they will ultimately come back to a world, either this world, if it is still
going on, or a world similar to this, where they can take up their evolution
at the point at which it was dropped. Hence the troubles are only postponed,
and it does not , therefore, seem to be worth while to adopt the plane
described.

It is because it is possible to "kill out " desire that occult teachers
prescribe instead transmutation of desire. That which is killed will rise
again: that which is transmuted is changed forever. A person, in a very
imperfect condition of evolution, who kills out desire, kills at the same
time all possibility of the higher, evolution, because he has nothing to
transmute. Desire is dead for the present life, which means..
[9/27/2014 6:12:10 PM] Thuan Thi Do: that all the higher life of the emotions
and of the mind is for the time killed.

The false vairagya is a repulsion from the lower, brought about by
disappointment, trouble, or weariness of some kind: the true indifference to
the lower things results from the desire for the higher life, and brings
about a quite different result.

In the Voice of The Silence it is said that the soul wants "points that draw
it upwards"; by killing out desire a man gets rid of the taste for life only
temporarily, : the taste is there latent, and will in due time revive.

If a man, who has killed out desire in the manner described, is quite an
average person, with no special intellectual or moral qualities, he will
remain, as said, away from this world, in a condition in which he is quite
happy, but in which he is of no particular use, either to himself or anybody
else.

If, on the other hand, the man is one who has gone a considerable way along
the Path, he may have reached a stage of meditation in which his mental
powers are of very great value. He may be able, even though unconsciously, to
influence the world, and so help in that great stream of mental and spiritual
energy which is drawn upon by the Masters for Their work in the world. This
is the reservoir which is filled with spiritual energy by the Nirmanakayas [
vide The Mental Body, page 193].

In all Cosmogonies “Water” plays the same important part. It is the base and
source of material existence. Scientists, mistaking the word for the thing,
understood by water the definite chemical combination of oxygen and hydrogen,
thus giving a specific meaning to a term used by Occultists in a generic
sense, and which is used in Cosmogony with a metaphysical and mystical
meaning. Ice is not water, neither is steam, although all three have
precisely the same chemical composition.
[9/27/2014 7:41:42 PM] Thuan Thi Do:
http://thongthienhoc.net/sach/GLBT-NTH/GiaoLyBiTruyen-NTH_Page_166.jpg
[9/27/2014 7:44:19 PM] Thuan Thi Do:
http://thongthienhoc.net/sach/GLBT-NTH/GiaoLyBiTruyen-NTH_Page_167.jpg
[9/27/2014 7:56:49 PM] Thuan Thi Do: STANZA III. — Continued.
3. “Darkness” radiates light, and light drops one solitary ray into the
waters, into the mother deep. The ray shoots through the virgin-egg; the ray
causes the eternal egg to thrill, and drop the non-eternal (periodical) germ,
which condenses into the world egg (angel).

(angel) The solitary ray dropping into the mother deep may be taken as
meaning Divine Thought or Intelligence, impregnating chaos. This, however,
occurs on the plane of metaphysical abstraction, or rather the plane whereon
that which we call a metaphysical abstraction is a reality. The Virgin-egg
being in one sense abstract Egg-ness, or the power of becoming developed
through fecundation, is eternal and for ever the same. And just as the
fecundation of an egg takes place before it is dropped; so the non-eternal
periodical germ which becomes later in

Vol. 1, Page 65 NATURE’S SYMBOLS.
symbolism the mundane egg, contains in itself, when it emerges from the said
symbol, “the promise and potency” of all the Universe. Though the idea per se
is, of course, an abstraction, a symbolical mode of expression, it is a
symbol truly, as it suggests the idea of infinity as an endless circle. It
brings before the mind’s eye the picture of Kosmos emerging from and in
boundless space, a Universe as shoreless in magnitude if not as endless in
its objective manifestation. The simile of an egg also expresses the fact
taught in Occultism that the primordial form of everything manifested, from
atom to globe, from man to angel, is spheroidal, the sphere having been with
all nations the emblem of eternity and infinity — a serpent swallowing its
tail. To realize the meaning, however, the sphere must be thought of as seen
from its centre. The field of vision or of thought is like a sphere whose
radii proceed from one’s self in every direction, and extend out into space,
opening up boundless vistas all around. It is the symbolical circle of Pascal
and the Kabalists, “whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere,” a
conception which enters into the compound idea of this emblem.

The “Mundane Egg” is, perhaps, one of the most universally adopted symbols,
highly suggestive as it is, equally in the spiritual, physiological, and
cosmological sense. Therefore, it is found in every world-theogony, where it
is largely associated with the serpent symbol; the latter being everywhere,
in philosophy as in religious symbolism, an emblem of eternity, infinitude,
regeneration, and rejuvenation, as well as of wisdom. (See Part II. “Tree and
Serpent and Crocodile Worship.”) The mystery of apparent self-generation and
evolution through its own creative power repeating in miniature the process
of Cosmic evolution in the egg, both being due to heat and moisture under the
efflux of the unseen creative spirit, justified fully the selection of this
graphic symbol. The “Virgin Egg” is the microcosmic symbol of the macrocosmic
prototype — the “Virgin Mother” — Chaos or the Primeval Deep. The male
Creator (under whatever name) springs forth from the Virgin female, the
immaculate root fructified by the Ray. Who, if versed in astronomy and
natural sciences, can fail to see its suggestiveness? Cosmos as receptive
Nature is an Egg fructified — yet left immaculate; once regarded as
boundless, it could have no other representation than a spheroid. The Golden
Egg was surrounded by seven natural elements (ether, fire, air, water), “four
ready, three secret.” It may be found

Vol. 1, Page 66 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
stated in Vishnu Purana, where elements are translated “Envelopes” and a
secret one is added: “Aham-kara” (see Wilson’s Vishnu Purana, Book I., p.
40). The original text has no “Aham-kara;” it mentions seven Elements without
specifying the last three (see Part II. on “The Mundane Egg”).